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" When I talk to children, I show them a typical drawing I made when I was six and point out to them that when I was their age, I didn't draw any better than any of them. "

Anthony Browne

Age

Talk

Drawing

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" Pictures are as evocative to me as smells. "

" Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous. "

" I had just been promoted to the first rugby team. It was a perfect, wonderful coming of age. My brother was already in the team, and my father had come to watch us. We went home, and my father died in front of me. Horribly, in about half an hour. He had a heart attack. "

" The first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely, there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background. "

" The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director. "

Anthony Browne

Paper

Director

" M dad was a boxer, so he had this fierce, physical presence. "

" As adults, we've seen so much before that we often turn the pages of a picture book without really looking. Young children tend to look more carefully. "

" Everyone can draw when they're five. Most of us lose the ability. "

Anthony Browne

Five

Everyone

" I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was. "

" The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life. "

" I never want to make a child worried or afraid, and I don't think I do. My pictures are born from the belief that children are far more capable and aware of social complexities than we give them credit for. "

" Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations. "

Anthony Browne

Dreams

" I use a little brush only for really small details. Over the years, I've started to use a much larger brush. "

" Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do. "

Anthony Browne

Picture

Time

" I see 'Hansel and Gretel' as a breakthrough book for me, and one of the reasons is because I started to apply meaning to the hidden details. "

" From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew. "

Anthony Browne

Art

Loved

" I've always felt that I was a bit of an outsider to the British children's-book illustration scene, because I don't work in line and wash. "

" Worrying can be a kind of caring, and as such is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life. "

" I didn't have picture books - there weren't many around when I was a child. "

" A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood. "

" Gorillas remind me of my father. He was a very big, physically strong man but also very sensitive. "

Anthony Browne

Father

Strong

" Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures. "

" Never forget that children are at the heart of everything we do. Respect them, listen to them, talk to them as equals, and care about them. "

" As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background. "